Durable underwater super-oleophobic/super-hydrophilic conductive polymer membrane for oil-water separation

Na Chen; Sian Chen; Hang Yin; Benfeng Zhu; Mengyan Liu; Yumeng Yang; Zhao Zhang; Guoying Wei

doi:10.1016/j.watres.2023.120333

Durable underwater super-oleophobic/super-hydrophilic conductive polymer membrane for oil-water separation

Water Res. 2023 Sep 1:243:120333. doi: 10.1016/j.watres.2023.120333. Epub 2023 Jul 10.

Authors

Na Chen¹, Sian Chen¹, Hang Yin², Benfeng Zhu³, Mengyan Liu¹, Yumeng Yang¹, Zhao Zhang⁴, Guoying Wei⁵

Affiliations

¹ College of Materials and Chemistry, China Jiliang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, 310018, PR China.
² College of Materials and Chemistry, China Jiliang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, 310018, PR China; State Key Laboratory of Molecular Reaction Dynamics, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Science, Dalian, 116023, Liaoning, China.
³ College of Materials and Chemistry, China Jiliang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, 310018, PR China; Department of Chemistry, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, 310027, China. Electronic address: zhubenfeng88@cjlu.edu.cn.
⁴ Department of Chemistry, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, 310027, China.
⁵ College of Materials and Chemistry, China Jiliang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, 310018, PR China. Electronic address: guoyingwei@cjlu.edu.cn.

PMID: 37454459
DOI: 10.1016/j.watres.2023.120333

Abstract

Oily sewage has made serious impact on environment and people's life, and its treatment has become a global problem to be urgently solved. Oil-water separation has been considered to be an effective method to treat oily sewage at present. In this work, an underwater super-oleophobic/super-hydrophilic membrane with oil-water separation and self-cleaning properties was fabricated by electrochemical oxidation of sodium lignosulfonate doped polypyrrole. The membrane showed super-hydrophilicity for water-removal in air and super-hydrophilicity for oil-removal underwater in both oxidation and reduction states. The oil-water separation efficiency of the membranes for different organics exceeded 98.44%, no matter in oxidation or reduction state. Moreover, the membrane still exhibited excellent performance in terms of the oil-water separation efficiency and flux after 70 cycles, which were greater than 97.18% and 70.14 L·m^-2·h^-1, respectively. Simultaneously, through exploration of the mechanism, it was found that the larger anion kept intact in the membrane during the redox process, which made the stability of composition and performance. Thus, the membrane with advantageous properties, including underwater super-oleophobic/super-hydrophilicity, high oil-water separation efficiency, high circulating rate and stability, has significant potential in separation and collection of oily sewage.

Keywords: Conductive polymer; Durability; Electrochemical oxidation; Oil-water separation; Underwater super-oleophobic.

MeSH terms

Electric Conductivity
Humans
Polymers*
Pyrroles*
Sewage
Water

Substances

Polymers
Pyrroles
Sewage
Water